This book is about how people (we refer to them as practitioners) can help guide participants in creating representations of issues or ideas, such as collaborative diagrams, especially in the context of Participatory Design (PD). At its best, such representations can reach a very high level of expressiveness and usefulness, an ideal we refer to as Knowledge Art. Achieving that level requires effective engagement, often aided by facilitators or other practitioners. Most PD research focuses on tools and methods, or on participant experience. The next source of advantage is to better illuminate the role of practitioners-the people working with participants, tools, and methods in service of a project's larger goals. Just like participants, practitioners experience challenges, interactions, and setbacks, and come up with creative ways to address them while maintaining their stance of service to participants and stakeholders. Our research interest is in understanding what moves and choices practitioners make that either help or hinder participants' engagement with representations. We present a theoretical framework that looks at these choices from the experiential perspectives of narrative, aesthetics, ethics, sensemaking and improvisation and apply it to five diverse case studies of actual practice.

About the Author(s)

Al Selvin, Verizon Communications and University of Technology Sydney, Australia Albert M. Selvin (Al) is Director, User Experience, in the Information Technology organization at Verizon. His research interests lie in understanding how people engage in creating representations of complex problems. He was the original developer of the Compendium approach and software toolset at NYNEX Science & Technology in the early 1990s, and a member of its core design team at the Open University since 2000. As a practitioner, he has facilitated over 500 sessions for industry, academic, and community groups using the Compendium approach. Previously, he worked as a consultant, user interface designer, technical writer, researcher, and musician. He has traveled widely by bicycle and foot in Asia, Europe, and North America. He holds a B.A. in Film/Video Studies from the University of Michigan (1982), an M.A. in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin (1984), and a Ph.D. in Knowledge Media from The Open University, UK (2011). He resides in Dutchess County, New York with his family.

Simon Buckingham Shum, Verizon Communications and University of Technology Sydney, Australia Simon J. Buckingham Shum is Professor of Learning Informatics at the University of Technology Sydney, where he is Director of the Connected Intelligence Centre. His research is at the intersection of sensemaking and computation: the invention of new digital tools and ways of thinking and working, that build the qualities needed for 21st-century learning. Specifically, he is interested in how computation can make the quality of thinking visible, to enable more reflective deliberation at a range of different scales from individuals, to small teams, to large networks. From 1995-2014 he was at The Open University's Knowledge Media Institute, which provided the academic environment for the projects underpinning this book. In his spare time he is a runner, and a kit and cajon drummer. He holds a B.Sc. in Psychology from the University of York (1987), an M.Sc. in Ergonomics from the University of London (1988) and a Ph.D. in Design Rationale from the University of York (1992). He lives with his family in Sydney.